This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C xc2xa7119 from an application entitled Apparatus And Method For Interconnecting Private Exchange System To The Internet earlier filed in the Korean Industrial Property Office on Jun. 8, 1998, and there duly assigned Serial No. 98-21097 by that Office.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for interconnecting a private exchange system (PBX) to the Internet, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for allocating an Internet protocol (IP) address to a card included in a private exchange, thereby interconnecting the private exchange to the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
As well known, the Internet, which is a network interconnecting numerous networks worldwide, interconnects numerous companies, schools, and government and public offices, etc. via those networks throughout the world. The Internet enables the transfer of information among various networks using some standard protocols such as the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Since the Internet has an open nature and a compatibility, the use there)f is greatly increasing. A variety of communication services are implemented using the Internet in that the Internet provides an architecture capable of transferring a variety of information.
Among a variety of communication services implemented by virtue of the above mentioned characteristics of the Internet, a service for transmitting voice in real time over the Internet has recently been emphasized. A representative example of such a voice transmission service is an Internet telephony service which is a technique for enabling a telephone duplex voice conversation over the Internet. By virtue of developments of audio processing techniques and techniques for interconnecting public telephone networks to the Internet, such an Internet telephony service has been advanced to a level enabling public telephone users as well as computers connected to the Internet to utilize international call services or toll call services over the Internet. In the future, the use of Internet telephony services will be greatly increased because it provides an advantage in that international call services and toll call services can be utilized while needing to pay only the Internet service charge.
Also, an activation of Internet telephony services will result in an extended application of such Internet telephony services to terminals subscribed to conventional public telephone networks in so far as those terminals are interconnectable to the Internet. In particular, where private changes used in general companies and offices are interconnectable to the Internet, such Internet telephony services will be emphasized more in accordance with a correspondingly increased usefulness of the Internet. Through private exchanges, which are main facilities for business in general companies and offices and connected to public telephone networks, various telephone services such as international calls, toll calls and facsimile transmissions are frequently used for business. However, such telephone services through private exchanges involve a high service charge. As a method for solving such a problem, Internet telephony services may be proposed.
However, it has been impossible to achieve an extended application of Internet telephony services to conventional private exchanges. Referring to FIG. 1, a private exchange 110, which has a conventional configuration, is illustrated. As shown in FIG. 1, the private exchange is interconnected to a public switched telephone network (PSTN) 100 and serves to conduct services for transmitting voice and data to digital phones 111 and general subscribers 11 n over the PSTN 100. Since such a conventional private exchange does not utilize any IP network, it has no function associated with allocation of IP addresses and routing. In other words, such a conventional private exchange system cannot access any general purpose IP network, so that it cannot utilize the inexpensive Internet network. Furthermore, conventional private exchanges as mentioned above should be equipped with a separate Internet connection unit in order to utilize Internet telephony services such as telephone call services and facsimile transmission services over the Internet.
Incorporated herein by reference are U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,764 to Ernst B. Riemann et al. entitled ATM LAN Telephone System having described therein a LAN (local area network) system having a PBX function and includes a PBX network call control interface, a socket-based programming interface that allows messages to be sent and received directly across a server bus to a control processor in a multi-port PSTN module, and also to communicate with remote telephony modules via a similar socket-based mechanism that sends messages across an ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) network using a standard protocol such as TCP/IP. This same interface can also be used to send messages across the Internet to control remote telephony resources at any other location also connected to the Internet; U.S. Pat. No. 5,875,176 to William Paul Sherer et al. entitled Network Adaptor Driver With Destination Based Ordering describes a system which is useful in LAN networking and WAN (wide area network) internetworking applications. In a LAN, data is generally transmitted between end systems as independent packets, with each packet containing a header having at least a destination address specifying an ultimate destination and generally also having a source address and other transmission information such as transmission priority. An end system generally listens continuously to the destination addresses of all packets that are transmitted on their segments, but only fully receive a packet when its destination address matches the end system""s address and when the end system is interested in receiving the information contained in that packet. Sherer et al. teaches an Ethernet packet that has an Ethernet header and a 48-bit Ethernet address (such as 00:85:8C:13:AA ), and an Ethernet trailer. Within the Ethernet packet is contained, or encapsulated, an IP packet, represented by an IP header containing a 32 bit IP address (such as 199.22.120.33); U.S. Pat. No. 5,802,285 to Seppo Hirviniemi entitled Wide Area Network (WAN) Interface For A Transmission Control Protocol/InternetProtocol (TCP/IP) In A Local Area Network (LAN) having TCP/IP software which uses a lower-level address resolution protocol (ARP) protocol to find a physical network addresses corresponding to a logical Internet protocol (IP) address; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,621,884 to Norman J. Beshears et al. entitled Distributed Data Access System Including A Plurality Of Database Access Processors With One-for-n Redundancy discusses conventional routers wherein routing takes place at the IP addressing level beneath which the link layer (Ethernet) has separate address assignments. To accommodate both layers, each router maintains two tablesxe2x80x94a routing table and an ARP (address resolution protocol) table. The routing table is used to determine how to route to a remote IP address, while the ARP table is used to determine what Ethernet address needs to be used to get to the given IP address.
Therefore, an object of the invention is to provide an apparatus and method for interconnecting a private exchange system to the Internet.
Another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus and method for allocating in IP address to a private exchange in order to interconnect the private exchange to an IP network.
In accordance with one aspect, the present invention provides an Internet connection apparatus for interconnecting a private exchange to the Internet, the apparatus being included in the private exchange and connected to a maintenance administration personal computer adapted to is allocate an IP address corresponding to an Ethernet address of the apparatus, comprising: an Ethernet connection unit connected to an Ethernet, the Ethernet connection unit having an intrinsic Ethernet address; a PCM (pulse code modulation) interface unit for transmitting and receiving PCM data with respect to a subscriber connected to the private exchange; a main interface unit for transmitting and receiving data and control signals with respect to a main control unit of the private exchange; a data process unit for compressing data transmitted from the PCM interface unit, and transmitting the compressed data to the Ethernet connection unit; and a control unit connected to the Ethernet connection unit, the PCM interface unit, the main interface unit, and the data process unit, respectively, the control unit serving to control operations of the units connected therewith in response to the control signals transmitted from the main interface unit.
In accordance with another aspect, the present invention provides a method for interconnecting a private exchange system to the Internet, the private exchange system including at least an Ethernet connection unit having an intrinsic Ethernet address and serving to connect the private exchange system to a maintenance administration personal computer, comprising the steps of: transmitting the intrinsic Ethernet address from the Ethernet connection unit to the maintenance administration personal computer via the Ethernet to which the Ethernet connection unit is connected; allocating to the Ethernet connection unit an IP address from the work station corresponding to the transmitted Ethernet address via the Ethernet; and connecting the private exchange system to the Internet by the Ethernet connection unit while using the allocated IP address.
When a private exchange, to which the present invention is applied, is connected to an Ethernet by its internal Ethernet connection unit, it sends its intrinsic Ethernet address to the network, so that it is allocated with an IP address corresponding to the Ethernet address from a maintenance administration personal computer to which the private exchange is connected via the network.